Burning Daylight Part I How He Made Eleven Million Dollars [with] Burning Daylight [Part II] His Adventures in San Francisco.

Two illustrated broadsides, one 23” x 17.25”, the other 24” x 17”. Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures, 1914.

An unrecorded pair of broadsides advertising an early silent film adaptation of Jack London’s novel Burning Daylight, produced by and starring film industry pioneer Hobart Bosworth.

Burning Daylight tells the story of one Elam Harnish, an enormously energetic and successful Klondike Gold Rush miner, better known as “Burning Daylight,” for his habit of crying “Hi, you! Hustle! Daylight’s burning!” Harnish, played by Bosworth, wins many admirers with his magnetic personality and enthusiasm, among them a dance-hall girl named Nell (played by Rhea Haines), whose love is unrequited. Having earned eleven million dollars in the gold fields, he heads south for San Francisco to play the market, with “his faithful Indian, Kama” by his side, his departure precipitating Nell’s suicide (the news of which never reaches him). A greenhorn investor, Harnish is soon cheated out of his fortune by the San Francisco money boys, but he makes another by resorting to their methods. Better still he wins the love of his stenographer, Dede (played by Myrtle Stedman).

Hobart Bosworth (1867-1943), a stage actor turned silent film star, founded the Hobart Bosworth Production Company in 1913 to produce a number of films based on Jack London novels, including The Sea Wolf, The Valley of the Moon and John Barleycorn, as well as Burning Daylight and others. Bosworth’s was the first of several film adaptations of Burning Daylight.

Both broadsides are illustrated with film stills and include fairly lengthy text, on the story, the actors, the making of the film, etc. The two parts were generally shown separately, but according to the AFI Catalog of Feature Films there is apparently evidence in “the Jack London collection…that the two parts may occasionally have been shown together as a long single feature.”

Rare. No copies of either broadside recorded in OCLC, nor does a google search yield any evidence of either.

REFERENCES: Burning Daylight: the Adventures of "Burning Daylight" in Alaska, AFI Catalog of Feature Films at www.afi.com.

CONDITION: Both good, with old folds and creases, and a few small breaks, chips, losses and short tears.